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MANILA – The National Telecommunications Commission has thumbed down a proposal to remove the expiry dates and load validity periods on prepaid cards.
Edgardo Cabarios, director of the NTC Common Carrier and Authorization Department, said the agency's study showed that removing the load validity periods on prepaid cards was “not feasible” because of the “carrying cost” or the average cost of operating and maintaining the network for subscribers.
"We computed the average cost per subscriber of the telcos for the last 10 years and the results showed that Smart's carrying cost is more than P3 per day and Globe, P8 to P9 per day. This means that to serve one subscriber, the revenue per subscriber should be a little over P3 for Smart and more than P9 for Globe. If you will remove the expiry dates, who will subsidize the cost in maintaining the network?" said Cabarios.
He said extending the validity periods for prepaid cards is "possible" but postpaid subscribers may shoulder the carrying cost of prepaid subscribers. This in turn would undermine the telcos’ revenues and push up voice call and short messaging service rates.
At present, mobile phone prepaid cards expire in a year, while the validity of the load depends on the amount purchased.
For credits of P10 and below, the load would last three days, after which it would disappear even if the buyer has yet to use it. The validity periods for other denominations are as follows:
- P10 to P50, 15 days;
- P50 to P100, 30 days;
- P100 to P150, 45 days;
- P250 to P300, 75 days; and
- above P300, 120 days.
At end-June, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. group had a subscriber base of 67.43 million. Of the total, unit Smart Communication had 26.9 million; Talk 'N Text, 23.9 million; and Sun Cellular, 16 million. The group's total prepaid subscribers numbered 65.31 million while its postpaid, 2.12 million.
Revenues from PLDT's prepaid subscribers reached P43.88 billion in the first six months, while those for postpaid, P8.16 billion.
In the first six months of the year, Globe had 31.73 million subscribers, of which 30.13 million were prepaid accounts and 1.6 million, postpaid.
The Ayala-led telco's consolidated service revenues in the first half of the year grew 6 percent to P40.8 billion from last year's P38.4 billion.
InterAksyon.com is the online news portal of TV5, a unit of the PLDT group.
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